povray <pov### [at] almostbestwebnet> wrote:
> PM 2Ring wrote:
> > This group of stones is a single isosurface. The wet sand is a
> > normal-perturbed plane. The stone textures are the standard textures
> > in stones.inc.
> >
> > Now I just need to figure out how to perturb the stones' positions a bit
> > more...
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Is there a particular reason you desired to make all the stones
> one isosurface?  it seems like you'd get a faster render time if
> they were seperate objects.

For a couple of dozen stones, yes, but not a few million. See the reply I
just wrote to Florian for more on this topic, povray.

> This in turn would allow their positions to be perturbed more.
> I also notice that the rocks are all smooth.  Perhaps you could use
> a blob object instead of an isosurface for a further increase in speed.

Blobs I know well, we had them to play with long before these new-fangled
isosurfaces. :) This scene is partly an exercise in learning how to do
tricky things with isosurfaces.

Also, isosurfaces can be faster than you might think. I have a sofa object
derived from one of Jaime's LightSys demo scenes. The original is built
from isosurface{f_rounded_box()}, I converted it to use superellipsoids,
but the isosurface version was the faster! IIRC, I posted the scene file in
p.b.i a couple of weeks ago; look for the very shiny blue sofa.

> I picture something like ... defining 12 different rock shapes.
> Then, whenever you place a rock, randomly pick which of the 12
> pre-defined rock shapes to place.  Rotate it randomly y before
> placing it.  As each one is placed, randomly texture it.

Sure, I can do that:). However, you don't really save memory (in the current
version of POV) by doing this, unless you're doing it with mesh objects.
For an interesting variation on this theme, see my two recent threads,
"MultiMesh" in the General area and "Grass using MultiMesh" in p.b.i.

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